Community efforts to stabilize the home insurance market in lower Puna have stalled, even as Gov. Josh Green takes emergency actions to address skyrocketing condominium insurance rates. Green earlier this month signed an emergency proclamation addressing condo insurance rate increases in the wake of the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires.
Although the market was already unsteady before the disaster, the wildfires led to enormous rate hikes, some as high as 1,000%. The proclamation stated that only three insurers in the state are offering policies to condominium associations that provide coverage for condo common areas, and those policies often cover only 20% to 30% of a building’s hurricane exposure. Associations are therefore forced to buy coverage from non-standard providers, at higher rates not regulated by the state.
Through the emergency proclamation, Green announced that funds would be taken from the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund and loaned to the Hawaii Property Insurance Association, through which condo owners and associations could purchase hurricane and property insurance. That solution was the brainchild of a joint task force established by the governor earlier this year “to evaluate and make recommendations on the extreme challenges and complex issues surrounding property insurance, particularly affecting condominiums, but with awareness of impacts to other housing,” according to a news release from Green’s office. But that task force has not addressed insurance is.